Enter Ghost

Pick it up: If you're looking to read about the lives of ordinary Palestininan people trying to go about their lives in circumstances that most of us would consider oppressive but is their daily reality. If you're looking to read about sibling dynamics - while Haneen and Sonia are not estranged per se, there is a distance there, to be bridged. If you like to read about plays in novels, the play (Hamlet ) is at the forefront of this oneand you don't need to have read it to enjoy the novel.

The novel, set in contemporary Palestine, centers on Sonia, a British-Palestinian actress who returns to Palestine after a long absence to visit her sister Haneen, who lives in Haifa and teaches at a university in Tel Aviv.  Haneen introduces Sonia to a close friend of hers, Mariam, a theatre director who is putting together a production of "Hamlet" in the West Bank. It is art but it is also an act of resistance. Mariam invites Sonia to be a part of it. Initially reluctant (mirroring her reluctance to see herself as anything but a visitor), Sonia eventually agrees, and starts to rehearse for the part of Gertrude. She meets the rest of the cast who come from diverse backgrounds within the region and as rehearsels progress, the dynamics of the cast shift and evolve. The play becomes a focal point of the novel, serving as a lens through which the characters explore themes of occupation, resistance, and the search for identity.